Bucknell University Press

Spanish author Carmen Martín Gaite, Spain’s most honored contemporary woman writer, was recognized for her short novel El balneario [The Spa] with the Café Gijón Prize in 1954, won the Nadal Prize in 1957 for her second novel Entre visillos (Behind the Curtains), and earned Spain’s National Prize for Literature for her 1978 novel El cuarto de atrás (The Back Room). Her subsequent works of fiction—all bestsellers when they appeared—have received less critical attention. In Calila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martín Gaite, Joan L. Brown, until recently the Elias Ahuja Chair of Spanish at the University of Delaware, writes the first comprehensive study of the author’s last six novels. Brown contributes to current scholarship about the author, and also shares unpublished letters and conversations with Martín Gaite—a dear friend whom she called Calila. The book is enriched by the voice of the Spanish author herself, and elucidates themes in her work that remain relevant today. 

Here we talk to Joan L. Brown about her relationship with Martín Gaite, personal and Spanish history, and female agency:  

What impelled you to write about the later novels of Carmen Martín Gaite, Spain’s most honored contemporary woman writer and your dear friend? Why did you write the book now? How did your friendship affect your role as literary critic?

I’ve wanted to write this book ever since I realized that Martín Gaite’s last six novels had been somewhat overlooked by literary critics. This lack of appropriate recognition was the same reason I wrote my earlier book about her first five novels, though they had the opposite problem: many critical awards but few of them known outside Spain. In Spanish we have the word “reivindicación” which suggests calling out an injustice, and that was my driving force. The only problem was that I couldn’t write about these novels when they came out—I was too close to my friend, whom I called Calila, to be an objective critic. After twenty years I was able to gain distance and perspective. 

In the book you trace two histories, the personal history of Carmen Martín Gaite and the sweeping history of democratic Spain. How do these histories intersect? What would a reader be surprised to learn about each one?

Spain’s history and the author’s history are inextricably intertwined. Her trajectory illustrates the maxim that historical events have more influence on a person’s life than his or her own decisions. Surprises come from pulling back the curtain on the rosy story of Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy and revealing the fallout for youth of that era. The transition had staggering societal costs, many of which were obscured by what was called the “pact of forgetting” that enabled former enemies to coexist. These costs were exceptionally high for young people, who were offered unlimited freedoms—the government turned a blind eye on drugs, some say cynically in order to silence rebellion—at a time when career opportunities were nonexistent. Carmen’s daughter Marta was a member of what is now known as Spain’s “lost generation.”

You observe that the six novels analyzed in Calila “explore themes that resonate today.” Please elaborate.

The themes explored in her last six novels could be taken from today’s headlines: women’s struggle for equality and self-actualization, the degradation of the earth’s environment, new configurations of family and friendship, the isolating effects of technology, the devastating impact of an uncontrolled plague. From the beginning of her career, Martín Gaite functioned as an anthropologist to her own culture. She had a sharp eye for human behavior and an even sharper understanding of human nature, though she was one of the least judgmental people on the planet. She was also supremely optimistic. A trained historian (with a doctorate from the University of Madrid), she viewed the past as a tool for improving the future.

How do Martín Gaite´s last six novels compare with her first five? What do you want readers to know about the two periods of her literary production, which were separated by a decade of sociocultural research?

Her first four novels in the 1950s and 1960s were written under censorship. They chronicled life for men and women under a dictatorship, using what author Juan Goytisolo described as “elusive-allusive” techniques—eluding the censors while alluding to social issues. Martín Gaite´s fifth novel, published in 1978 after censorship had ended, remains her most celebrated. El cuarto de atrás (The Back Room) is a unique hybrid—a fantastic novel that retrieves real memories of growing up female in Franco’s Spain. By the 1990s Martín Gaite could write whatever she pleased, and she let her imagination soar. From a young adult adventure set in New York City to an epistolary novel about two brave and talented Spanish women, to a fractured fairy tale that depicts Spain´s transition to democracy, to a Proustian memoir of mother-daughter love and conflict, to a tapestry of vignettes tracing a successful woman’s return to her birthplace, to a gripping story of a Spanish millennial striving to decipher his family’s secrets—her novels of the nineties would have been unimaginable earlier.

You write about “female agency” with regard to Nubosidad variable (Variable Cloud) and the epistolary genre. More generally, how is Martín Gaite’s work—including fiction and nonfiction—associated with agency and identity?

All of Martín Gaite’s writings are about human agency: male and female. She disliked artificial distinctions and roles, remarking in an interview that people should be free to just be as they are. In each of her novels of the nineties, characters work through issues of present-day identity by sorting through memories of the past—figuring out how they became who they are now in order to advance confidently into a brighter future. Just as her characters vanquish ghosts of the past—their own and Spain’s—Martín Gaite uses memory, language and writing to recover her own sense of agency after the death of her only child.

The book analyzes Martín Gaite’s later novels in their historical and critical contexts. Thanks to your connection to the author and your trove of letters from her, Calila also sheds light on the novels’ biographical context. What do you want readers to take away from this book?

I want them to go back and savor these extraordinary novels with heightened awareness of the author’s own story and the story of her times. Each novel is a unique gem. Martín Gaite felt that her first responsibility as an author was to build a bridge to the reader, and she succeeded in making her bridges so strong that they support even those who have no prior knowledge of the country on the other side. Critics have called Carmen Martín Gaite one of Spain’s two great prose stylists of the twentieth century, along with Miguel Delibes, and I want readers to see why.  My goal is for readers to appreciate the second half of Martín Gaite’s literary output along with the first half, assuring her a place in the canon of contemporary Spanish literature. 

Martín Gaite continues to be admired on both sides of the Atlantic—with celebrations planned for the centennial of her birth.  Calila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martín Gaite is available for order in paperback, hardback, and ebook.    

As Black History Month comes to a close, continue to celebrate, learn, and amplify Black stories. The Bucknell Press continues to partner with the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures by publishing the  Griot Project Book Series, an interdisciplinary series of “monographs, collections of essays, and poetry exploring the aesthetics, art, history, and culture of African America and the African diaspora.” 

The Griot Project Book Series has published seven fantastic books, including Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2021) by Shanee Stepakoff. The text is a moving collection of poetry drawn from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown. The Bucknell Press recently published a Q&A with the author about her process and the art of listening. While the series continues to grow, the Bucknell Press continues to support the events and programs coordinated by the Griot Institute that occur throughout the year. 

Beyond the Griot Book series, the Press recently published two independent titles that align fruitfully with the Griot mission as well as the celebration of Black History Month: Challenging the Black Atlantic: The New World Novels of Zapata Olivella and Gonçalves by John T. Maddox IV and Mayaya Rising: Black Female Icons in Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture by Dawn Duke.

In Challenging the Black Atlantic, John T. Maddox IV, an assistant professor of Spanish and African American studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, analyzes how the historical novels of Manuel Zapata Olivella and Ana Maria Gonçalves map black journeys from Africa to the Americas in a way that challenges the Black Atlantic paradigm that has become synonymous with cosmopolitan African diaspora studies. Unlike Paul Gilroy, who coined the term and based it on W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness, Zapata, in Changó el gran putas (1983), creates an empowering mythology that reframes black resistance in Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. In Um defeito de cor (2006), Gonçalves imagines the survival strategies of a legendary woman said to be the mother of black abolitionist poet Luís Gama and a conspirator in an African Muslim–⁠led revolt in Brazil’s “Black Rome.” These novels show differing visions of revolution, black community, femininity, sexuality, and captivity. They skillfully reveal how events preceding the UNESCO Decade of Afro-Descent (2015–2024) alter our understanding of Afro-⁠Latin America as it gains increased visibility. 

“Maddox offers us a refreshingly provocative revision of Black Atlantic theory and African diasporic authorship across Luso-Hispanic communities. His insightful readings will further enrich our understanding of the complex and nonlinear facets of African diasporic Blackness, Black Atlantic religious traditions, and Black women in impactful, new ways.”

—Nick Jones, author of Staging Habla de Negros

“John Maddox’s Challenging the Black Atlantic is as monumental as the historical sagas the book studies. . . . Originally conceived, meticulously researched, and well written and argued, the book is an intellectually sophisticated interdisciplinary study that will certainly leave its vital mark in the field of Afro-diaspora studies for years to come. A must read!”

—Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte, author of Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature

Mayaya Rising: Black Female Icons in Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture by Dawn Duke, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, re-centers previously overlooked black heroines of Latin America and the Caribbean. In answer to the historical dearth of models of African ancestry in the region, Mayaya Rising explores and celebrates the work of writers who intentionally center powerful female cultural archetypes. In this inventive analysis, Duke proposes three case studies and a corresponding womanist methodology through which to study and rediscover these figures. The musical Cuban-Dominican sisters and former slaves Teodora and Micaela Ginés inspired Aida Cartagena Portalatin’s epic poem Yania tierra; the Nicaraguan matriarch of the May Pole, “Miss Lizzie,” figures prominently in four anthologies from the country’s Bluefields region; and the iconic palenqueras of Cartagena, Colombia are magnified in the work of poets María Teresa Ramírez Neiva and Mirian Díaz Pérez. In elevating these figures and foregrounding these works, Duke restores and repairs the scholarly record.

“Dawn Duke’s study of black women writers in the Hispanic Caribbean—its continental components included—breaks important new ground. Its intersectional stress on race and gender illuminates the path of authors who draw strength from feminist and anti-racist legacies owed to iconic ancestresses. The cultural and linguistic diversity of this literary corpus pulverizes homogenizing assumptions about ‘Spanish American’ literature.”
—Silvio Torres-Saillant, coauthor of The Once and Future Muse: The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat

“[A] carefully detailed and focused discussion of Afro-Latina/Caribbean women writers from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Colombia. Duke discusses strategies of resistance, recuperation of memory, and rewritings of history, centering her reading of Afro-diasporic women’s literature transversally within Hispanic Caribbean and Latin American Literature Studies. It is a much-needed repositioning . . . ‘Enhorabuena,’ Dawn Duke. As an Afro-Boricua writer, I celebrate Mayaya Rising. Latin American and Caribbean Literary Studies need more books like this.”
—Mayra Santos-Febres, author of La amante de Gardel

Velocipedomania: A Cultural History of the Velocipede in France is a collection that foregrounds the significance of the nineteenth-century French invention that later developed into the modern bicycle. Edited by Corry Cropper, professor of French at Brigham Young University, and Seth Whidden, professor of French literature, Queen’s College, Oxford, the book includes three original source texts translated from French—available for the first time together in English—that explore the cultural significance of the velocipede. This engaging volume explores how the new machine represented cutting-edge technology and gives readers a glimpse into the material culture of France in the late 1860s, while underscoring the machine’s importance to the study of gender, culture, and the history of sport.

Here we speak to the editors about class mobility, transportation, and translation:

Why were you both drawn to studying the velocipede and its parallels to French culture? 
Both of us enjoy cycling—in fact we have cycled together before—so this was a topic that ticked all the boxes for us in terms of our scholarly focus on nineteenth-century France and our interest in the sport.

Throughout the text, you argue that the velocipede becomes a “symbol for economic mobility” that creates a “sense of middle-class national solidarity” (24-25). Can you explain how the wooden wheeled machine became such a symbol, particularly during late Second Empire in France?

The velocipede amazed people because it was new and different. Seeing people zipping around under their own power on two wheels without touching the ground attracted attention. And since the velocipede was a French invention, it served as a source of pride for the entire country. Its very existence implied progress, energy, freedom, and inventiveness. Initially, riding was primarily an upper class hobby, but the velocipede quickly became ubiquitous in Paris and inspired people of different classes to ride. More physical mobility also held the promise of more social mobility: people who couldn’t afford a horse suddenly saw new opportunities.

Would you call the velocipede a modern form of transportation?
We would call it the modern form of transportation. Besides the railroad, no form of transportation changed life more in France than the velocipede and its descendant the bicycle. In fact, it could be argued that globally the bicycle remains the most important form of transportation ever invented; it provides mobility for people from every socioeconomic level in nearly every region on the planet.

Can you speak to the experience of translating Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede and the Manual of the Velocipede compared to the operetta Dagobert and His Velocipede?¹ While both texts emphasize the influence of the velocipede in French culture, do the different genres communicate that influence to varying extents? 
The Note is more technical in nature, and the original author was more a bureaucrat than a writer. So we found it challenging to translate. But it remains an important piece because it argues for the utility of the velocipede. The operetta, Dagobert and His Velocipede, appeals to a popular audience and is designed to entertain. Since the action is set in the Middle Ages, the velocipede becomes a source of anachronistic humor: we had great fun working on it. The Manual of the Velocipede straddles the two: it features some practical advice alongside arguments in favor of the velocipede’s usefulness, and it ties the velocipede into French history, French literature, and the tradition of gallic humor.

In the introduction, you note Timothée Trimm’s front-page article in Le Petit Journal (July 5, 1868) and his greatest fear that “the velocipede will damage France’s literary reputation” (7). As French professors (as well as translators of these texts), did Trimm’s fear have any merit?
Not really. But it does highlight the fear people have around any new technology while also implying that one of the most central aspects of French identity and pride in the late 1860s was their literary tradition. It might be comparable to an American journalist being afraid that TikTok would destroy Hollywood and the American cinematic tradition.

While your book addresses this question in detail, why, briefly, was the enthusiasm for the velocipede so short-lived? 
The main company that manufactured and promoted the velocipede suffered from infighting and financial problems. Then in 1870, France was lured into a devastating war against Prussia, and in 1871 there was a bloody civil war known as the Paris Commune. All this taken together spelled the end of the fervor for the velocipede in France². But the cultural forms created around the velocipede would help shape how the bicycle was perceived later in the century.

Velocipedomania features forty black and white and six color images, including a number of illustrations of the velocipede that originally appeared in newspapers, musical scores, manuals, and advertisements from the 1860s. It is available for order in paperback, hardback, and ebook.

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[1] This book provides a translation of an operetta, Dagobert and his Velocipede, along with a recording of music
from the work (found here: velocipede.byu.edu)

[2] Significantly, the velocipede played a role during the Commune. In fact, Corry co-authored an article about it in a volume co-edited by Seth

Bucknell University Press is pleased to announce the rollout of a new colophon, debuting with its fall-winter 2022-23 publications. The fresh design features BUP’s name and an icon depicting the recognizable tower atop Bucknell’s beautiful Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library, with its distinctive finials and bison weathervane.

The new branding signals BUP’s “intention to advance and evolve, its commitment to the fields and the specialists whose work we publish, and its pledge to reflect and carry the university’s commitment to intellectual exploration and scholarly excellence worldwide,” according to director Suzanne E. Guiod. “Now in our sixth decade, BUP’s hope is that this new graphic identity will resonate with new generations of authors and readers, and become instantly identifiable for the quality and value of the work it represents.”

The colophon was designed by Adrienne Beaver, Bucknell University Communications Associate Director of Design, who said she aimed for “a clean form to allow for vibrant reproduction when reduced on a book spine.” Beaver selected fonts from the Freight Sans Pro collection, designed by Joshua Darden in 2005. “I find this font family to be clean, modern, and pleasing to the eye. The logo is clear, bold, and contemporary, neither too traditional nor too edgy, an approach I hope will provide great longevity.”

Ghislaine McDayter, Associate Provost for Research and Creative Activity remarked, “As Bucknell University Press continues to evolve as one of the most exciting of the small academic presses in America, this new logo will make it immediately recognizable as a press that remains dedicated to publishing fresh, important new voices in the humanistic fields.”

Replacing the university’s wordmark, which has long stood in as BUP’s logo on book spines and in other branded materials, the new colophon is unique to the Press, symbolizing its clear purpose in the publication and dissemination of innovative research in the humanities.

Prior to the Bucknell wordmark, Bucknell University Press books were branded with the university seal, approved by the university’s board of trustees in April 1849 and depicting the sun, an open book, and waves, meant to symbolize the light of knowledge and education surmounting the storms and turbulence of life.

Internationally distinguished in Iberian, Latin American, Irish and global eighteenth-century studies, Bucknell University Press has been publishing in the arts, humanities, and social sciences for more than 50 years. We proudly collaborate with institutional partners like the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures and the Samek Art Museum, and with learned societies such as the Goethe Society of North America and the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society to publish book series. Our newest collaboration is with the Library of Congress Publishing Office.

To learn more about Bucknell University Press and the books we publish, visit www.bucknelluniversitypress.org.

#ReadUP on these 10 noteworthy Bucknell UP titles published in the last 10 years